


The Angle of Repose

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1, Stargate Universe
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s02e13 Alliances, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 11:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4562931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attack on Homeworld Command, when Daniel is light-years away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Angle of Repose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magickmoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magickmoons/gifts).



> Prompts: 1) Jack is injured or ill; 2) angst. Optional Request: Season 8 or later, and Daniel is off-world when something happens to Jack. No mpreg, no character bashing.
> 
> Thanks to Princess of Geeks for making this ficathon happen. None of this year's stories would exist if not for her.
> 
> Thanks also to Magnavox_23, for meta'ing about this ep.

The house in the Springs has a stuffed leather armchair by the bed. It was meant for reading, in that little corner where the two windows provide nice light, but it turned out to be a great place to give each other blowjobs, and unless they're sixty-nining that's where they usually have oral sex when Jack's in Colorado. But they both like the house the way it is -- so much that Daniel took possession of it, when his trip to Atlantis fell through and Jack still hadn't found a buyer he thought was worthy of the place -- so Jack hasn't moved any of the furniture out East with him, and the bedroom in the condo is the only room he could justify fully stealthing, and there isn't space in it for a blowjob chair. So there's no way for one of them to settle comfortably onto folded legs and deliver fellatio entirely backache-free while the other sits up comfortably supported and watches; but it treats Daniel to the view he had yesterday morning, of Lieutenant General Jonathan O'Neill laid out naked beneath him, beautifully supine, melted into the mattress, undone by climax, utterly his. Legs close together because Daniel's knees had closed around his thighs when Daniel mounted him. Arms down at his sides where Daniel had pinned them because Jack gropes and fists in orgasm and sometimes stilling his hands makes him come extraordinarily hard.

Jack's body is arranged exactly the same way now. The superposition lines up so precisely that it would be eerie if it weren't so hideous. Either way, it's vertiginous. A happy dream overlaid on a nightmare. Hard to process either of them as real, suspending Daniel in a sick limbo somewhere in between.

He's had enough time to process. He shouldn't still be in shock. He's seen Jack in beds like this before. After Antarctica. After 666. After Baal. (He remembers, since his visit with Fifth's version of Sam. Not the omniscience or hobbled omnipotence, not the knowledge she said she accessed. But his interactions with the people he loved. His farewell to Jack in the spectral gateroom; the conversation in the elevator where he sealed Abydos' doom. The visits with Sam, in her dreams, the only time her muscular mind relaxed enough for her to be conscious of his company. The imagined life he created for Teal'c, so that he and Bra'tac would survive without intervention the Others would block. His time with Jack in the cell in Baal's fortress -- every word they said to each other, every phoneme of his name when Jack called out to him. Those brief minutes in the infirmary, after. When the Others wouldn't let him stay, suspicious that he'd meddled, fed information to Jack's team. Not so omniscient as they claimed to be, certainly never as beneficent as he'd longed to believe they were. Punishing him, deliberately hurting him, just as they did Orlin, and Oma, and countless more, and always at the price of mortal pain and mortal lives.) But it is a shock. An aftershock. He's been existing in a virtual reality, over all the long hours and light-years between not-here and here: his constantly updating mental construct of what must have happened, his continually revised projections of what would happen next. Real reality, Jack broken upon the stark shore of this white-sheeted bed, is a deep, dull, numbing jolt, like a subterranean concussion.

They won't let him stay. Intricate, fragile strings were pulled to get him in here even for these five minutes. For all his paper proxies and powers of attorney, he's still not family in the eyes of the bureaucracy. But they've allowed him a glimpse. They've let him see that Jack's alive -- see for himself the rise and fall of his chest, the pallor of his living flesh. He's not on a ventilator. He's breathing. His blood is circulating. Monitors can lie, but the body doesn't. Daniel has seen a lifetime's worth of death. This isn't it.

"I'm here, Jack," he says. He can't touch with his hands, he can't sit by Jack's side until he wakes, but he can send his voice into the depths of Jack's unconscious mind. Jack knows, he thinks; Jack is hyperaware of his presence even in soundest sleep. But they have a history of being figments of each other's imaginations, or thinking they are. It's always best to confirm through all available means. "You're in the ICU at Walter Reed, so I can't stay by the bed, but I'm in town and I'm in the building. So is Paul. Sam and Teal'c are on their way. Everyone you sent through ahead of you made it out. The situation was contained." This isn't their infirmary; he has to watch what he says. The main thing Jack will want to know is that his people got out. He'll deduce from his location and his own state of not-deadness that the bomb did not go off. The other information is flak thrown up to confuse the gaydar. Daniel is only one of many friends gathering here in support. Finally, he adds, "I'll let Sara and Cassie know when you wake up." Which is a fudge, since Sara's living off the grid in Idaho and Cassie's in West Africa with the Peace Corps, and the only way to get in touch with either of them is through emergency channels, and he chose not to inflict that kind of scare on them. But it will assure Jack that he's not dying, because if he were, they'd be on their way too. News of the attack apparently hasn't reached them yet, or they'd have called. Now that he's seen Jack for himself, he'll leave messages where they can get them when they're somewhere connected -- hopefully before they see the coverage on TV.

"Sir," one of the nurses says. They've been a ghostly blur to him, like the moving figures in a nineteenth-century daguerreotype; the only clarity in the room has been the still point of Jack in the center of his field of view.

"Yeah," he says. "OK." He curls his hand into a fist to stop himself from laying it on Jack's arm. "Jack, I've gotta go, but you know the drill. I'll be close by."

There's no response. No twitch in the eyelids, no parting of lips, no change in breathing. That's for the best. He should stay down deep, for now, while his body rests up for the work of healing.

Daniel projects all the love and reassurance and strength in his being to Jack in one compressed psychic burst, and leaves the room before the thought can form and piggyback on the signal: that he might stay down deep for good, and heal, but never come up.

> > > > > > > > > > > > > >

He was ready to gate home when the two airmen came to fetch him. That was unprecedented; there was no reason the SGC couldn't have radioed for him to return to base early. Sure, he'd talked Landry into letting him go offworld in the current climate, just a couple of hours, to personally vouch for a team's credibility with some people who remembered the old SG-1 but weren't inclined to trust these new folks, or believe recorded messages or a voice over a radio. But he was done in an hour, and using the remainder of his allotted time to revisit some interesting stone columns around the gate. Partly because they were interesting, but mainly because Landry had gotten schedule-obsessed of late, and the hassle he'd get if he initiated an unscheduled gate activation would waste time he'd rather spend with the second cousins twice removed of Ogham inscriptions.

"What's goin' on, guys?" he asked the airmen, all abstracted friendly befuddled scholarly innocence. Taking in the AFSOC flashes, the armed-to-the-teethness, the not-from-the-SGC-ness.

"Just bear with us, if you will, sir," the taller one said, scanning the surroundings rather than looking at him, keeping in bodyguard distance of Daniel while the shorter one handed a piece of paper to the team leader of the unit Daniel was very temporarily detached to, said team leader being as surprised and wary as Daniel was, and not hiding it under a geek veneer at all.

She read the orders, looked up at Daniel, folded and pocketed the paper, and said, "It's kosher, Doc. You're released from my command. Stay safe out there." She turned and started issuing quiet instructions to her team, and her team started encouraging the locals to leave the gate area. Two of them that Daniel remembered from that long-ago first contact looked to him and wouldn't move.

"It's OK," he said, deeply hoping that it was. "They're here to help you, just as I said. Listen to them the way you'd listen to me." And then he had to turn, because the shorter of his escorts was dialing, and he needed to see the DHD.

It was an address he didn't know, and the place they stepped out into on the other end was a bunker. The connection shut down, leaving them in a fluorescent dimness. The airmen fanned out in silence to secure the exits, then returned to the DHD.

"OK, Master Sergeant," Daniel said, in a very different voice, to the taller airman while the shorter one, whose insignia said technical sergeant, started dialing back out. "What's the deal."

"There's a situation on Earth, sir. That's all I know."

Foothold. Nuclear war. Assassination. Invasion. _Jack._

No. "What kind of situation?"

"The kind that results in my deployment to deliver you safely to this location, sir."

Pegasus Asgard. Rogue Ascended. Lucian Alliance. Wraith. Goa'uld.

He put a stop to the mental litany. The glyphs glowing on the DHD were the address for the alpha site. He'd get a full report when they got there.

Only they weren't going there. The master sergeant reported in by radio. Reynolds was in charge, and sounded as if he'd expected to be hearing from guys like this. Sounded a little as if hearing from guys like this confirmed something _he'd_ suspected but hadn't been sure about. And all he knew -- or all he could say -- was that there had been an attack on the Pentagon.

No further information. No way of knowing whether it was military or terrorist, domestic or international or interstellar, ground or air or space. Context suggested the latter in all three categories. They were in the endgame in the dirty little gang war the Lucian Alliance had engaged them in since the System Lords fell. The Free Jaffa had been systematically cleaning up territories, working with SGC personnel to help Goa'uld-suppressed populations achieve stable self-governance. A month before, the most powerful warlord, Massin, had been assassinated and his organization had disintegrated into rival factions that wiped each other out. The recent attacks on Earth's offworld bases had been death throes -- the desperate, last-ditch efforts of small-time gangsters to strike a disabling, or at least impressively symbolic, blow to Earth's presence. Their bombs had been discovered in time and hadn't gone off; they had bragging rights only to having infiltrated two bases. Nobody had rushed to fall in with the infiltrators. There was hardly anybody left, their infrastructure was shot, and after two collapses of the so-called Alliance what would have been a power vacuum was an unnavigable debris field. A strike at Homeworld Command would be a futile gesture at this point. But these were space thugs. It was more than possible.

He said as much to Reynolds, in two words with a rising inflection. Reynolds said they were preparing for multiple possible scenarios and awaiting word from the SGC. The master sergeant said they'd sit tight and signed off. The conversation had lasted less than thirty seconds. Further communication would be through the beta site unless there was reason to speak directly to alpha.

That they'd reported to alpha at all was a significant datapoint. Thirty seconds of radio contact on top of the time it took seven chevrons to lock was heavy use of alpha's gate during an emergency.

"You're Jack's men," he said to the master sergeant. Air Force Special Operations Command, where Jack's roots went deep. Where loyalties, and connections, went even deeper.

To his surprise, he got a nod.

"And the very fact of your deployment means that something has happened to Jack, or is believed to have happened to Jack, in the event of which you or someone like you was to retrieve me from wherever I might be at the time, and secure me in this safehouse."

"You're very important, Doctor Jackson," the master sergeant said. It wasn't confirmation, exactly. But the master sergeant held station by the DHD while his partner took up a guard position with lines of sight on both steel doors, and Daniel could read that well enough.

Something had happened to Jack that met some criteria Jack had established for what passed the limits of his trust in Stargate Command to keep Daniel safe, and so Daniel was here, in the care of air commandos. And whatever it was, if Daniel got wind of it, Daniel would be likely to go charging back to Earth to try to fix it, or rescue him from it, or die in it by his side. And as part and parcel of guarding him with their lives, these men were posted here to make sure Daniel didn't do that.

_Goddammit, Jack. Goddammit, goddammit, god fucking dammit._

> > > > > > > > > > > > > >

There's a TV set on every wall of the waiting room, each one tuned to different coverage of the Arlington attack. All the coverage looks the same. Someone has mercifully muted the sound, but that's activated the closed-captioning on the screen across from Daniel's seat, and the letters are large enough to keep drawing his gaze. He supposes he could scare up a remote, but talk shows and reruns would be worse, and blank screens would be worse than that.

"Can't stand the tube, can't stand having it off, can't read, can't stand the inside of your own head." Paul sips his coffee. Someone's always bringing coffee, sandwiches, magazines. There's been a continuous flow of military and civilian personnel paying their respects, making sure Daniel has whatever he needs, filling the room with warm bodies and a courteous but natural sound of conversation that keeps the silence from driving Daniel mad. But Paul's been here since they came in. If Daniel didn't know him as well as he does, he'd suspect him of riding herd, making sure that Daniel, in his presumably distraught state, doesn't do or say anything he shouldn't. Probably that's how Paul sold his presence here to his superiors, come down to it. But Daniel and Paul go back a long, long way.

"What do people do?" Daniel asks him. He means people with families, people _from_ families, people who know how this works. People raised with brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins, grandparents; people whose tribes gather in times like this; people who live in a culture that is completely alien to Daniel. He couldn't ask Jack this question. Jack comes from the heart of that kind of culture and would find Daniel's dismay incomprehensible.

"They talk," Paul says simply. With the ease and certainty of someone who's just like Daniel, but who's learned the ways of this strange world where people know to come, bring coffee, bring sandwiches and magazines, say a few truly heartfelt words, move off to keep the room filled with warm bodies and living voices.

"What I need to talk about, I can't, here," Daniel says. Staring at the screen, the same shaky long-range aerial footage shown over and over again, the same baseless analysis and conjecture superimposed in black-blocked letters. Wide-scale evacuation halted, residents returning to their homes. As yet no word about whether this was a deliberate act or an accident and who might have been responsible.

They're reporting it as an explosion at the Pentagon. Five fatalities, a dozen injured, three people in intensive care. No names released yet. Crediting the prompt building evacuation, the renovation and structural improvements since Oklahoma City and 9/11, for minimizing casualties. No one talking about the shielding installed around a top-secret command center, an intergalactic communications lab. No one talking about an invisible spaceship with a radioactive payload.

No one asking, yet, why the damage is consistent with an external impact, not an internal explosion. No one going on to wonder how an aircraft penetrated the zone and why it didn't show up on anyone's radar. No mention of radiation. No mention, as yet, of the word 'bomb' outside the context of not knowing if it was one.

This could force disclosure in a climate of fear and confusion, just when it's looking like a stable galactic situation might be a near-term achievable goal. Or it could give the anti-disclosure faction the leverage to slam the door for another ten years, just when there was hope that they'd have a wondrous and reasonably safe interstellar neighborhood to offer the world.

Paul is professionally obliged not to have an opinion about this, so it's not as if they could have talked about it anyway. Colonel Davis's job is to do the bidding of the Joint Chiefs, grease wheels, keep lines of communication open. He's a facilitator and a conduit and a fixer and about a dozen other indispensable things that kept him a major for an unconscionably long time and will prevent him ever rising as high or being as decorated as he deserves to be. He's too useful right where he is. Which seems to be fine with Paul, who's satisfied with doing what he's best at sans public recognition, a state Daniel's intimately familiar with. But Paul has a very strong opinion about this, and has for a long time.

Paul has followed his gaze to the screen. "You can talk about it, Daniel. These are all our people. And frankly if you feel like talking now, you should." Before there's no choice about it, he means. Before Daniel is called upon to talk when he doesn't want to. Daniel's head jerks around, and Paul falters, uncharacteristically, and says, "I mean disclosure. I'm sorry -- did you mean the other thing? Because you can rest assured that that's not on anyone's agenda."

Daniel takes a steadying breath. "No, I meant disclosure. The other thing ... " He fans his fingers to indicate the people around them. "I admit I'm a little concerned -- from a behavioral, anthropological standpoint, of course -- that all this ... might be sending a message somewhere."

He means the incontrovertible evidence that in this room he is the military spouse. Not the general's old buddy, not Jack's best friend and medical proxy, not the representative of Jack's SGC family. Clearly, definitively, the fallen soldier's spouse.

When he became aware of it, he panicked, and got angry at the glaring breach of Jack's privacy, and had an urge to throw them all out. But he didn't throw them out. In truth he's desperately grateful that they're here.

God, if Jack -- if the next step is the flag-draped coffin, the black suit, this same cast of characters in a new scene, a different set, murmuring condolences -- or, worse, if they don't, can't, because he's not -- they'll send the flag to Sara, and she'll be pissed, she'll be so fucking pissed if they send her that fucking --

Someone is in front of him, leaning down, offering a hand. He shakes the hand. Hears a name. Says hello, name. Name looks freshly battered, harrowed, bruised. Had to switch a cane from one hand to the other to shake hands. Is alive right now because of what Jack did over there. Just wanted to pay his respects before he left the hospital, say how grateful he is, how much he hopes Jack pulls through. Daniel thanks him for coming. Thanks him fervently, almost profusely, gripping his hand, reluctant to let it go. As the man walks away, Daniel remembers seeing him standing off to the side a while ago. Waiting for a break in Daniel's conversation with Paul, so that he wouldn't be interrupting, and then seeing Daniel flail, maybe catching Paul's eye, and coming over.

"They're our people," Paul says. "That's the only message here."

> > > > > > > > > > > > > >

Jack, or Landry, or somebody, must have ordered that Daniel be kept in the loop. How the air commandos knew that, they wouldn't say; they basically wouldn't say anything at all. But three times an hour, the master sergeant dialed the beta site, Daniel identified himself, and they received a terse briefing.

First, it was assumed to be a naquadria bomb; the Pentagon had gone to a heightened threat level after receiving intel of a planned attack on Homeworld, the last two attacks had been bombs planted by infiltrators, the natural conclusion was that a bomb had detonated. But if a naquadria bomb had gone off in the Pentagon, Daniel thought, they wouldn't be reporting an attack on the Pentagon, they'd be reporting the wholesale destruction of the U.S. capital. And once they were alerted, they'd have located and disabled any bomb planted by an infiltrator, as they'd just done twice offworld. The question was, given the advance warning, whether Jack had gotten the hell out of there, before whatever happened happened.

For twenty minutes, Daniel sat hunched over the icy acid slush in his belly, swallowing back nausea, because he knew the answer to that question. His presence here was the answer.

Next it was updated to a kamikaze attack, some kind of airborne vessel flown into the Pentagon building. Given post-9/11 security, Daniel thought, this was not an airplane. It had to be a cloaked Alliance ship. If it meant to crash, it would have blown up. It would have carried a payload rigged to detonate on impact. If it didn't mean to crash, it meant to land and leave a bomb set for timed or remote detonation. Either way, there would have been a bomb in that ship. So there was a bomb after all -- possibly a much bigger one than an infiltrator could smuggle in on foot. But if Washington was still there, it hadn't gone off. If the pilot meant to deliver the bomb and escape to a safe distance before detonation, there might be some time. What part of the building did the ship hit? Would a bomb squad be able to get in? A pilot who knew the location of ops and the comm lab in the building, and who had enough control of the ship to aim it, would have aimed for the inner north side. Thousands of people worked in the building, but they'd had some warning. How many people had the Pentagon evacuated before the impact, and how much of the surrounding population could they evacuate now? Daniel had a fair idea of where their beaming-capable spaceships were, but no idea whether any could get back in time to assist.

A quarter-hour later, it was a cloaked Alliance ship that probably meant to land on the building but crashed into it instead and there was presumed to be an unexploded bomb in the wreckage but nobody could get to it. And Daniel thought, _I knew that, and if Jack's alive Jack knows that, and if Jack's anywhere nearby, Jack's going to try to get to it._

Then it was a a cloaked Alliance ship that crashed into the inner north side of the building, and there was an unexploded bomb in it, and either the ship or the bomb was emitting a lethal level of radiation, and for the next few minutes, Daniel couldn't think at all.

"They've got protective gear in ops," the technical sergeant said. Daniel looked up slowly, focused on him. "At Homeworld Command, in operations. Radiation-hazmat, filter masks, oxygen. Hell of a supply closet. Very well stocked."

He looked familiar. He'd seemed familiar since Daniel had first seen them, but he hadn't paid the feeling much mind. He still couldn't place the face. He said, "Thank you. I didn't know that."

"Very sturdy," the master sergeant added. "Not so much a closet. More of a ... "

"Vault," said the technical sergeant.

"Not so much a vault," said the master sergeant. "Let's call it a very big safe."

Jack in a radiation suit, then. If he could get to the suits. If he hadn't been crushed.

If he was even at work this morning. Daniel's hand twitched for a cell phone he didn't carry offworld, a scheduling app that couldn't include Jack's appointments, a mental calendar he no longer had. In the Springs, he'd known Jack's schedule as well as his own, from briefings to dentist visits. Not anymore.

The ifs spiraled out into the future. What he'd do if. What Homeworld would do if. What it would do to Cassie. Whether he could stand to keep living in the house. Keep working in the Program. How stupidly barn-door it would be, to quit now, when they could have had five good years together if he'd stepped back when they got that box with the ZPM. Barn-door -- that was Jack's term. _I say 'Cross that bridge' a lot, too, Daniel._ Not Jack's ghost, just the Jack-voice he heard in his mind all the time, the voice of what he'd internalized of Jack's attitudes. It was usually snarky. This one wasn't snarky.

He'd been to the other side of that bridge. He went on, after Sha'uri. He knew he'd go on. It was a terrible, brutal knowledge.

"Doctor Jackson." The master sergeant. "Time to check in."

A new officer had taken over comms duty at the beta site. She reported three people alive near the point of impact inside the building, one of them an airman. At last contact they'd been headed for their best estimate of the bomb's location with the objective of defusing it, but owing to the radiation, communication had been lost. Daniel wasn't sure what to think. It could be Jack, sacrificing himself, about to die in a way that Daniel had personally experienced and was horrified of, doing pretty much the same thing Daniel had done himself. It could be Jack in protective gear. Or Jack could be dead. It felt as though he would have sensed it if Jack had died, and he didn't know whether to trust that feeling or dismiss it. A heroic struggle through radioactive wreckage to save the city was certainly Jack's MO, and he'd made a career of being damnably hard to kill. But how would Jack or anyone else defuse an Alliance-engineered bomb without someone on the radio to direct them? Jack had a staggering breadth of skill, a lot of it in munitions, but even specialists found Alliance technology confounding.

Another twenty minutes of speculation by turns intensely focused and agonizingly futile, another exchange with the officer at beta. No change onsite. Both _Sun Tzu_ and _Hammond_ had been alerted, but whether they'd be available to assist was not yet known. Daniel stared at the master sergeant and said, "He's chipped. Jack. He's chipped."

"Yeah," the master sergeant said.

"He's going to use himself to tag the bomb for beam-out."

"That'd be a plan," the master sergeant acknowledged. He didn't have to add, _If he's alive. If it's him. If he can get to the bomb. If a ship comes in time._

This was how it had been for Jack, those two years in charge of the SGC. When Daniel was missing, held hostage, under fire. Every time, this was how it was. Piecing information together like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to see where Daniel was, figure out what was happening to him. Project what he'd do next in an ever-evolving set of conditions. Triangulate. Extrapolate. In the worst cases, without the least blessed thing he could do to change the outcome. And no idea whether Daniel was alive or dead.

This was why Jack had told him, "I can't do this anymore. I'm taking the Homeworld posting. It's that or get out, and at Homeworld I'll be of some use."

It had broken them up. Temporarily, since it didn't take long to figure out that as long as they _weren't_ dead they couldn't live without each other, but badly.

That was years ago. The wounds were long healed. But Daniel hadn't really understood at the time what Jack's problem was, and the years hadn't changed that. He had a better idea now. And no question in his mind of retiring from active gate duty, if Jack lived.

They'd been in this bunker for two hours. It felt like two days.

The next update reported that the identities of the people attempting to defuse the bomb were unclear because at least two of them were connected to other people through the Ancient long-range communications devices. Daniel's heart leapt -- smart, smart Jack, swinging by the comm lab, swapping in some former Alliance member via one of their stones-equipped ships or colonies, somebody with the expertise to disable the bomb -- but then he realized. If the command post outside the Pentagon knew that the people were swapped, the connection had been made before that group lost radio contact.

That connection had been made before the impact.

"Who's in charge of the command post?" he asked.

"Colonel Telford, sir. I'm sorry, I have to shut this connection down, we're due to brief another team."

Daniel stared at the collapsing wormhole, then at the concrete wall beyond the gate. A building full of the highest-ranking military personnel in the United States, many of them fully aware of the interstellar situation, many more of them with combat and first-responder experience David Telford didn't have, none of them former double agents who'd been _brainwashed by the people who'd just attacked them_ , and Telford was in command. Telford, who carried a ten-ton grudge for being cheated out of command of the _Destiny_ expedition. Telford, who'd apparently allowed a scheduled consciousness transfer to proceed _when the Pentagon was under threat of imminent attack_ , and might be reporting incomplete information in order to delay repercussions.

He remembered. Last week: Doctor Covell, the new head of hard sciences, a guy he'd been trying to like, trying to cooperate with despite an immediate, visceral dislike, barely in the door before he was heading to Washington to tour _Destiny_ via the stones. Saturday morning: Jack, up early on a weekend reading work stuff on his notebook in bed, before Daniel had set the computer aside so he could get at his cock, griping about budgets and purse strings and some senator who'd be touring _Destiny_ via the stones. They -- or the _Destiny_ crewmembers wearing their bodies -- were two of the people who'd set out to defuse the bomb.

It might work. _Destiny_ had a former Alliance operative, completely turned as far as he knew. He might know which wire to cut. Telford's irresponsibility might save hundreds of thousands of lives.

He had no way of knowing if Jack was the third person in that group.

"Senator Michaels," he said aloud, as her name came to him. Then his gaze jumped to the technical sergeant, as the name blazed a connection across his synapses and he realized who the guy reminded him of.

No glances were exchanged. The technical sergeant's attention didn't waver from the doors. Neither man's expression flickered. The master sergeant said "Sir?" with perfectly mild military neutrality. But Daniel knew the master sergeant had seen him look.

"I ... just remembered that she was supposed to be visiting the Pentagon this week," he said. "I'm just hoping she got out OK."

"As do we all, sir," the master sergeant said, and they went back to waiting, no more said about it, because Daniel knew that he wasn't ever supposed to know their names. He knew the importance of commandos' anonymity.

He also knew, now, that the airman guarding the doors was Technical Sergeant John Michaels, Jr. The son of the man who was Jack's commanding officer and friend, who died because of bad intel during a botched extraction in East Germany in 1982. Whose dying words to Jack were an exhortation to look after his wife. Whose son was now looking after Daniel, as Jack had looked after Barbara.

Whose picture Daniel had seen on the sideboard in Jack's dining room for years. Had just glanced at yesterday morning, on an end table in Jack's condo, as he picked his knapsack up from the floor beside it, on his way out the door to fly back to the Springs.

> > > > > > > > > > > > > >

Sam comes and sits with him for a while, but she's needed back on _Hammond_ , and they've never been good at waiting and worrying over Jack together. She left word that Teal'c had been delayed. Daniel wants to wave him off -- either he'll be too late, or there's no rush at all -- but sending a message would be complicated, and he knows that being here will matter to Teal'c. He also knows that Teal'c has been chasing down Lucian Alliance strays. He doesn't know if what's delaying Teal'c is what Jack would call 'a Jaffa thing.' The pilot of the attack vessel is dead. Maybe Teal'c's going after the people who sent him.

Paul's phone has been vibrating like a sex toy, almost continuously. Sometimes he answers, has a clipped conversation with a lot of "yes, sir"s in it. Sometimes he texts. Vidrine has stepped in as interim head of Homeworld, location undisclosed. Daniel stares at the captioned TV screen and thinks it's a good thing they didn't move the stargate into the basement of the Pentagon. He's never found out whose bright idea that was, but the IOA nixed it over Landry's objections, and he's wondered ever since whether Homeworld is on Landry's wish list. It's good to know Vidrine is there. Wherever there is, now.

He's run out of idle musings. He's running on empty. Nothing in him but bleak, relentless fear. He's starting to get used to it. He's too tired to care about what that means.

He closes his eyes, just for a second, and the next thing he knows, the ambient noise in the room has abruptly dropped, and there's a doctor walking toward him through the doorway.

> > > > > > > > > > > > > >

The beta site said that the device had been neutralized. The next few responses amounted to "stand by." Then they were told that normal gate operations would resume in stages. Twenty minutes after that, almost four hours after the commandos had spirited Daniel into the bunker, they got the word that all teams and travelers who'd been diverted to alternative sites were now cleared to gate back to the SGC. 

"That includes us, Doc," the master sergeant said.

After a few busy signals, they established a wormhole. Daniel transmitted his IDC and stepped across the galaxy in emotional stasis. Expecting nothing. No hopes, no fears. No one met him on the other side. He and the commandos went through the standard screenings, right behind SG-9 and with another team on their heels, and at some point after that the commandos slipped away without him noticing. The base was still on alert.

Landry was in the briefing room with most of the senior staff. He cut off whatever he was saying when Daniel came in, and started to recap. Daniel said, "I've been briefed, but there was no word about Jack."

Landry drew breath to reply. A flood of adrenaline slowed Daniel's perception of the next fraction of a second to quarter speed. Landry's lips and tongue began to form the initial affricate of either 'general' or 'Jack.' His expression was grave enough to signal that the news would be bad, but there was no shadow of regretful reluctance, if he'd taken the time to get to know Landry better personally he might be able to gauge --

" ... ack O'Neill was last seen injured but ambulatory at the intersection of C ring and corridor 10. He led his people to safe egress and turned back, presumably to attempt to neutralize the explosive device he'd deduced that the ship must have carried. He was wearing a radiation suit and he was fairly well equipped, but the radiation leakage penetrated deeply into the structure on that side of the impact and he was never in radio communication. The EOD technicians who reached Senator Michaels and Doctor Covell did not see or hear anyone else, but our eyes in the sky have located one remaining warm body in the building. General O'Neill may still be trying to reach the device from the other side, he may have succumbed to his injuries, or he may have been trapped in any of several subsequent structural collapses. A SAR unit has been dispatched to retrieve him. If their progress is impeded by heavy debris or they're forced to abort, we'll have a ship in beaming range in five hours."

It took Daniel a few seconds to review what Landry had said after 'injured but ambulatory,' from which point he'd logged the sounds but been incapable of processing. He said, "Thank you, sir." He recovered a little more and said, "With your permission, sir, I'm -- "

"A car is waiting to take you to Peterson. Go."

He and Landry hadn't gotten along for a long time now, and he'd had no intention of waiting on Landry's permission, but his voice was inadequate to his gratitude as he thanked him again and headed for the stairs, shedding his SGC BDU jacket as he went.

It took three hours to dig Jack out. It took three and half to fly Daniel to Andrews, another hour to reach the hospital on roadways jammed with returning evacuees and people belatedly fleeing. Jack was in surgery when Paul met Daniel at the hospital entrance. Internal injuries and a broken tibia (the other one) from the ceiling collapse that had trapped him; bruising, lacerations, and a broken arm from the initial impact.

"He's going to make it," Paul said.

Daniel had never heard Paul tell a morale-boosting fib or say something in order to will it to be true. He hoped this wasn't an exception.

He hoped a lot of things.

He stepped through the hospital doors.

> > > > > > > > > > > > > >

"Heeeeeey," Jack says, a melismatic morphine drawl through a dopey grin.

"Hey," Daniel says softly, and pulls a rolling stool up under his butt, then hikes in close to the bed, schooling his hands. It's a private room, but nothing is private here. "They gave me ten minutes."

"Gonna be asleep again in five," Jack says. "In and out. You really here?"

"I'm really here." The cast is on Jack's far arm. The near hand has an IV taped to it. The near leg is in a cast, too, but only the shin-ankle-foot; he'll be able to bend his knee. Daniel burrows his forearm under Jack's hand, and the weak, warm squeeze Jack gives him is better than the painkillers they're giving Jack. "Will you remember that after I go, or think you dreamed it?"

"I dreamed you were here. Before. Not there ... that was weird. Thought I'd had it, should have felt you. Maybe 'cause I hadn't had it."

"I was here. While you were still out."

"Scary, huh."

"Let's just say I'm very glad that you're awake."

"For three more minutes." His eyes slide half closed, hover, then open again. "The fallout from this is gonna be a pain in the mikta."

"We'll get through it."

"Always do."

Jack slips away into the morphine twilight for a while. His hand stays wrapped around Daniel's forearm. Daniel takes stock of him from this new, securer perspective. Substitute bruises and lacerations for patches of frostbite, dehydration for hypothermia, and he's in about the same shape he was in after Antarctica. Older now, though, with a longer recovery ahead of him. But a lot of their courtship was conducted through recuperations. _Like old times,_ the Jack-voice in his head says, always with the positive spin when it isn't snarking and griping ... and when Daniel looks up, Jack's eyes are open, and he's smiling again, gently, and Daniel realizes that the voice wasn't in his head.

That's when he breaks down.

He does it quietly.

The nurse lets the ten-minute rule slide.


End file.
